Between Kings, page 2
part #10 of The City Between Series Series
“So playing was what you were doing?” I asked slowly.
I could feel the stirring of Between around him, but it wasn’t Athelas trying to do anything; I had opened myself up more to every connection there was to see—even the ones that weren’t out in the real world. Around Athelas’ brown curls, memories swirled, big and bloody, inviting me in to catch them and see in first person the answers I would desperately like to know.
It wasn’t exactly that they were actually swirling around his head—they were stuck inside, safe and squashed down so that no one could get to them, least of all Athelas, I suspected—but with my way of seeing the world, they were pretty obvious. Maybe I should say that the way they interacted with the world was what was visible. A kind of magical version of the chemical reactions you can make in the human world just by existing in it and interacting in it.
He barely shrugged, suffocated in the pollution of those memories. “One can’t exist always performing merely the letter of the law, after all. To what do these questions tend, Pet? I should have thought you’d be eager to get your revenge—or are you planning on keeping that until after you find my lord?”
“No one’s getting revenge,” I said. “Not right now, anyway: I’m looking for a memory. I’m looking for a few, actually, so you’d better get ready.”
“One should never give warning when one is about to do something unpleasant unless one is trying to incorporate the knowledge of coming pain into one’s torture.”
“Suppose it’s a good thing I’m not trying to torture you, then,” I said, and slipped right into his memories.
It’s funny how stuff gets easier with practise. Your brain knows the right pathways and does what it needs to do to get you where you need to go, even if that stuff is magic and the right pathways involve seeing the world in just the right way to be able to get hold of everything there is to get hold of instead of just the stuff that’s in the human world.
Funny how even though Athelas had called it torture to have memories extracted, he didn’t seem to be trying to keep many of them from surfacing. There were one or two that he was making a decent effort to keep down, of course, but the rest were just sort of floating around, ready to be seized and seen.
The ones he was—carefully?—suppressing might have been interesting to me if I had really been here to get my questions answered, but I wasn’t. I stored away the realisation that Athelas was probably trying to tempt me into going after the carefully suppressed memories instead of the ones that he was allowing to float free, and dipped into a nearby memory at random, taking Athelas with me. I’d known he would come with me, because if he was in here experiencing a memory, he wouldn’t be lost in the depths of his mind, trying not to think of things he really didn’t want me to see.
Funny how deceiving people gets easier when you know them very well, too.
The memory flowed around me, making me a disembodied Athelas who wasn’t quite connected with the body or the memory, limited in what I could sense and feel. I could have let myself sink further in, but I didn’t because I was here to do something else. There would be enough time to be going over Athelas’ memories later, when there was some consensus about what we were going to do—right now I wasn’t here to see them, I was here to trap Athelas within them. I didn’t have time to be making sure that he couldn’t escape while we were busy, and it was the one fitting prison in which I could think of keeping him.
The memory came to me easily, but not so easily that it was suspicious. Used to dealing with Athelas, I found that suspicious. There were other memories I could have fought for, but I had chosen this one at random and I wanted to follow it to the end. If I’d been trying to make sure I found memories he didn’t want me to find, it was probably the method I would have used. I wasn’t, but despite that, the memory I was following was one I was quite sure Athelas didn’t want me to see. He wouldn’t be so clumsy as to make it too hard to get into, either, though, so I wasn’t worried about not being able to do what I’d come here to do.
Caught up in the memory, I found myself striding away from my house—from the Pet’s house. The head I was in knew that it was the Pet’s house and not its own. It had brief, fluttering thoughts that made up a whole but didn’t connect anywhere that I could see; I caught a glimpse of a few of them. There was one that just said ticket of return: death of a pet that trailed back through his mind, tumbling past another that suggested quietly a similar thought: ticket of return: clean up human risk factors.
Maybe I muttered it aloud. I certainly thought it. “Can’t even think in a straight line. You gotta corkscrew everything.”
It was hard to keep hold of any of those fluttering thoughts: they didn’t sit still long enough to be able to be fully read, and I wasn’t sure it would have helped me too much if I had been able to read them. I had a feeling that it wasn’t the thoughts themselves, but the tenuous, momentary connections they made with the thoughts around them that was the important thing.
I couldn’t fathom thinking in this way—not inside my own head—and it made me wonder suddenly how Athelas existed like this. His mind divided, his loyalties even more so, and no way of being able to settle back to consider his own self or goals to gain any perspective.
It would have been hard to figure out exactly what was going on in the memory if I hadn’t matched up the two flittering thoughts with the part of town I was rapidly approaching in Athelas’ body. He hadn’t travelled by bus or taxi; he’d moved so swiftly and seamlessly Between that I only noticed him coming out when I recognised the street he was walking down.
And he apparently knew the street very well, too: he didn’t even hesitate at the gate, though he must have known he set off every fae-tripped sensor in the place.
Athelas had arrived at the headquarters of the human group, and uppermost in his mind was the curly-edged thought of ticket of return: clean up human risk factors. That thought stayed close, wafted around by the turmoil of Athelas’ mind, and at last I understood why the scrap of thought that was ticket of return: death of the pet was so nearby and buffeted against the first thought so often.
This was the day. This was the day that Athelas had tried to kill me, and then had gone out to murder all of our human friends to assure his return in safety to Zero’s dad.
I wasn’t here to observe memories or try to find out why he had done what he had done, but I couldn’t help paying closer attention to what was going on in the mind around me anyway. If I had expected to feel even a faint sense of sorrow or shame from him, I was disappointed. I wasn’t connected enough to feel things easily, but I could feel the emotions nearest to Athelas’ mind, and there was nothing there but a certain cool determination to get the job over and done with. He must have been just coming away from trying to kill me in my room, and there was nothing there to show for it: no regret, no shame, no sorrow at having to do something that he hadn’t wanted to do.
All I could sense was the urge to get on with the job quickly and so completely that there would be no doubt at all about the fact of the death of the humans. I followed that urge, that determination, to see if it was attached to an order from Lord Sero—an inviolable order that he couldn’t help but perform—and found exactly what I’d dreaded.
It wasn’t direct orders. It wasn’t even something that Lord Sero had known about, let alone given contingent orders about. It was Athelas’ own thought that it would be much easier to return to the older Lord Sero with the death of the Pet and the deaths of the humans as a sign of good faith. It would be something that would cover any possible slips in the past.
I let the idea of possible slips in the past flow over me without following that thread. It was stupid to have had hope or dread when it came to Athelas and his motivations.
Why should I have dreaded confirming the exact answer that had been most likely? Why should I have expected anything else of the fae who had killed my parents, my friends, and nearly everyone around me? Why had I allowed a small, sick little hope that Athelas hadn’t been able to do anything but what he was ordered to do grow in my heart when I should be hating him, pushing him out of my mind, and concentrating on the friends who were still alive?
Athelas should be nothing to me, because I had been absolutely nothing to him. Worse than nothing—I’d been a momentary stop and a momentary alliance that was built on lies to tide him over until he could return to his own place. And the deaths of my human friends had been nothing but a tidying up of loose ends that would make things easier for Athelas when he returned to Lord Sero senior.
Smoothing the road was the faint thought I caught from somewhere, and it made me so tired and miserable that I must have made some sort of movement out in the physical world. I felt a warmth around my left hand and took a moment to let it sink in before I distanced myself from my own body and drew myself and Athelas deeper into the memory.
He had to be fully immersed in the experience if what I was trying to do was going to work. I felt a brief sensation of minds merging and relaxed a bit. Athelas had sunk deep into the memory, and he wouldn’t easily come out.
Still, for safety’s sake, I let the memory play a little longer.
“It’s the old man!” said someone’s voice, cheerfully disagreeable. Ezri, grinning, and with a cricket bat on her shoulder, approached.
There was a familiar echo to the sound of it, and it took me a few frozen moments to remember that I had heard Ezri say the same—or something very similar—just a few days ago through the closed network we’d used to stay in touch while hunting sirens. A ghost in the network was what we’d thought it was, and we had been right.
My stomach lurched. It really was that night.
I missed the next few words, and even some of the movements, caught in the horror of that thought and by the familiarity of their faces. It wasn’t fair for me to take comfort in seeing their faces through the eyes of their murderer, but it was the only closure I had.
“I don’t think he’s here to talk, Ezri,” said Abigail, her eyes watchful and hard, and I knew then that I would have to leave the memory soon if I wanted to avoid seeing anything that I didn’t want to see.
“You are, as usual, inconveniently perspicacious,” Athelas said, and I felt the vibration of it as though I had said it.
I would have closed my eyes if I could have, but my eyes weren’t my own. I had a few moments of blind, awful sickness, and when I came out of that unseeing and momentary panic, the first thing I heard was Athelas once again.
“There’s really nothing you can offer me, I’m afraid,” he said, and as he said it, I felt my own body moving as if it were his. Two swords slicked out of his sheaths at once, swift and liquid in the draw, and his stride lengthened and grew light.
I let myself drift gently up and out, sealing the memory behind me quietly as I left him there in his own memory, caught in the same night over and over again. I didn’t want to see what would come after this. I had already heard the voices of my dead human friends, caught in a loop that played their last words over and over again and I didn’t want to wait and see the visual representation of it. I didn’t think I could bear it.
I took my time slipping from Athelas’ mind, with the steadily increasing warmth around my left hand guiding me on my way out, wary of leaving any trail by which Athelas could possibly follow me out. But all was quiet as I woke in the physical world, memory-Athelas and metaphysical-Athelas one and the same for as long as I chose to leave him there.
When I opened my eyes again, the physical Athelas I saw might well have been Athelas from a few weeks ago: pensive, lost in thought, and gently sorrowful. He looked as though he could glance up any minute and catch me watching him, but I knew otherwise.
I didn’t have to speak in a softer voice, but I found myself doing it by instinct, as if Athelas could wake up if we were too rowdy. I said, “We can go now,” and headed for the door.
There was a soft resistance at my fingertips—JinYeong, who couldn’t see what I’d just done, clinging to my fingers and pulling me back with an inquisitive look.
I stopped long enough to explain, “I’ve looped him up in a memory. He won’t come out of it unless one of us touches him, and there’s already some sort of Between magic coating the room. Reckon Zero got that done before the king called him away.”
“Will it be enough?” he asked, allowing himself to be drawn toward the door.
“Dunno,” I said, more from habit than conviction. I was as sure as I could be when it came to something I’d done using Between tools. “But it’ll have to do, because I don’t have anything else. Even if he figures out that he’s trapped in his own memory and wakes up, I don’t reckon he’ll be able to get out of the room without one of us letting him out—don’t reckon any fae that might want him will be able to get him out, either.”
“It would be better if he were dead,” JinYeong said darkly, exiting the room after me.
“That’s rich,” I said, with a surprised snuff of laughter. “You were just advising me not to kill him.”
JinYeong shrugged one shoulder and drew even with me on the stairs. “It is different.”
“What, him being dead and me being the one to do it?”
“Yess,” said JinYeong through sharp teeth, sibilantly thoughtful. He said it in English, too, which was surprising. “I am already a monster: even if I kill him, I can live happily. I think you can’t.”
He moved ahead as I stopped on the stairs to contemplate the odd warmth of feeling that had so suddenly spread over me. Then, as he turned back with an enquiring look, a step below me, I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks,” I said.
I probably should have expected him to step swiftly forward and nudge me into the bannisters to kiss me properly, but it still took me by surprise. He had his arms around me before I was prepared for it, but the kiss was soft enough that I could have pulled away from it if I’d wanted to.
I didn’t pull away. I tilted my head back a bit and pressed up instead, and although I didn’t remember reaching out, my left hand was curled around the right side of JinYeong’s collar a moment later.
He pressed tighter, closer, and suddenly it was too much. Too much heartbeat in my ears. Too much breathlessness and confusion and warmth. I pushed JinYeong away, and he let me do it with a warm reluctance that confined itself to my fingertips, which he still held.
“You did it first,” he said, and he sounded about as unsteady as I felt.
I tried to say, “That’s fair,” but I didn’t seem to have the breath to do it. Then a voice from around my ankles said explosively, “Lady! There are no spoons left.”
“Heck!” I said, jumping. The old mad bloke clung to two of the bannisters behind me, his head poking as far through them as it could get, looking up at me with slightly wild eyes. I complained, “Do you have to do that right behind me? Hang on—you were the one who pinched all the spoons in the first place! If there are none left, that’s your fault!”
“We don’t need to be talking about spoons right now,” Daniel said from the living room, on a growl.
I had to bite back an irritated reply, because JinYeong had already continued down the stairs, though he lingered at the bottom. I would have preferred to have had a moment or two longer to say something to him, even if I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to say. Instead, I had to go down to the living room and join everyone else because Les liked to hang onto the banisters and burble about spoons.
Les was pulling at my sleeve and still protesting the lack of spoons by the time I got to my seat in the living room. You could say that the living room is our council of war chamber these days. Normally, I’d go and get everyone coffee, but out of the everyone I’d usually get coffee for, one was a serial killer and another had now been snatched away by magic to fight or die. The third was already sucking on a blood-bag—and he’d gotten that himself while Les was still complaining about spoons.
I might have tried to make coffee anyway, but one of the lycanthropes was doing it by then. Maybe Daniel had told them to—he was waiting in the living room, arms crossed, and I knew that he still had a lot to say.
Before I could sit down, someone knocked on the door. Luckily for me, it was the outside door instead of the linen closet door. I didn’t trust the linen closet door too much these days. It could be Palomena, our friend and ally, or it could be another member of the King’s Enforcers, who definitely weren’t friends or allies, in so many different ways.
I went to get the door before one of the lycanthropes could get there and found Detective Tuatu standing outside.
“What’s wrong?” was the first thing he asked me, looking narrowly at my face as he stepped into the house.
“Funny business,” I said shortly, as the North Wind also swept through the door in a furious gale behind him.
“Where is Sarah?” she demanded.
She had probably felt the lack of Sarah in the house as soon as she got through the gate and into the yard.
“King’s got her,” I said. “That’s the funny business. Her and all the other heirlings in the house except for me. We’ve still got the Harbinger, though.”
Tuatu went faintly ashy grey. “We told her parents she was safe!”
“She was, until about twenty minutes ago.”
North, her delicate, vivacious face alert, said, “Sarah’s in a Challenge? All of them are?”
“That’s what Athelas reckons.”
This time Tuatu went wholly grey. “You’ve got the psycho one here?”
I couldn’t help saying, “There are two psychos here,” but it left me with a bit of a wobble in my chin.
JinYeong, looking pleased with himself, purred, “Ne,” at Tuatu and put his arm around my waist, still sucking on his blood bag.
Tuatu’s eyes flicked down to that arm, then to my face. “Is he allowed to do that?”
That did away with the wobble in my chin; I grinned, warmth in my chest. “S’pose,” I said. “I told him I’d date him, and I’m the one who kissed him, so—”
